1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an apparatus useful for reprocessing special waste containing photocrosslinkable scrap to give domestic waste.
2. Description of Related Art
Photocrosslinkable waste materials arise from many process areas. For example, photocrosslinkable materials, such as dry resists, are used in the production of printed circuit boards. These dry resists are light sensitive materials containing a film which is applied by lamination using pressure and heat to the surface of a support material and is converted by exposure and development to a masking layer. Waste material from such a process since it is photocrosslinkable can generally not be disposed of as normal waste, similar to domestic waste, but must be treated as a special waste. This special waste must correspondingly be disposed of in a complex and thus higher cost manner.
Furthermore, in the lamination of printed circuit boards, dry resist strips are generally produced as scrap material, the surfaces of which are photocrosslinkable and thus must be disposed of as special waste.
Also, photopolymer layers which change their adhesive properties as a result of irradiation are, for example, used in the production of color proof films. These are usually light-sensitive layers which are enclosed in a sandwich-like manner between two different support materials, generally films, of which one is transparent to the irradiation. If the two support materials separate following the irradiation, the unexposed parts of the photopolymer layer remain adhered to the one support material, while the exposed parts of the photopolymer layer, on the other hand, adhere to the other support material.
The production of such color proof films gives unexposed waste strips, i.e., photocrosslinkable waste strips, which must be disposed of as special waste.
Such special waste is likewise produced in the processing of solder resist in the form of a solder mask. Solder resist is fundamentally a photocrosslinkable resist, the processing parameters and irradiation results of which differ somewhat from those for dry resist. If support materials or printing films are treated with photocrosslinkable solder resist, the scrap must be disposed of as special waste.
The thermally crosslinkable components produced in systems such as those described above must be converted into unreactive material by the action of heat before being disposed of as normal waste. Scrap from screen printing films can also be disposed of as normal waste by photocrosslinking the scrap.